Jules turned pale; but his noble face instantly resumed its calmness,
though it was now a false calmness. Drawing the baron under one of the
temporary sheds of the Bourse, near which they were standing, he said
to him in a voice which concealed his intense inward emotion:--

"Monsieur, I will listen to you; but there will be a duel to the death
between us if--"

"Oh, to that I consent!" cried Monsieur de Maulincour. "I have the
greatest esteem for your character. You speak of death. You are
unaware that your wife may have assisted in poisoning me last Saturday
night. Yes, monsieur, since then some extraordinary evil has developed
in me. My hair appears to distil an inward fever and a deadly languor
through my skull; I know who clutched my hair at that ball."

Monsieur de Maulincour then related, without omitting a single fact,
his platonic love for Madame Jules, and the details of the affair in
the rue Soly which began this narrative. Any one would have listened
to him with attention; but Madame Jules' husband had good reason to be
more amazed than any other human being. Here his character displayed
itself; he was more amazed than overcome. Made a judge, and the judge
of an adored woman, he found in his soul the equity of a judge as well
as the inflexibility. A lover still, he thought less of his own
shattered life than of his wife's life; he listened, not to his own
anguish, but to some far-off voice that cried to him, "Clemence cannot
lie! Why should she betray you?"

"Monsieur," said the baron, as he ended, "being absolutely certain of
having recognized in Monsieur de Funcal the same Ferragus whom the